


ghosts

by elizabitchbennet



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, revival, this is trash and its like 2 months too late
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-02
Updated: 2015-08-02
Packaged: 2018-04-12 12:08:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4478732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elizabitchbennet/pseuds/elizabitchbennet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>leaving him is as gradual as falling in love with him was.</p>
            </blockquote>





	ghosts

leaving him is as gradual as falling in love with him was.

[tropical islands are nice for a change of scenery, but it’s all too easy for darkness to find you when there are no lights and noise and work to chase it away. unremarkable houses are, theoretically, better. though not by much]

she does not disappear from their home in a sudden flurry of suitcases and shouting matches, but slips out quietly like air under the crooked front door of the cabin. each day their closet is a little bit emptier and her locker at the hospital is a little more full, growing crowded with the skirts and shirts that once hung next to his sweaters and jeans. perfume bottles vanish from the vanity without explanation and one day there is a dark, dustless space where picture of her holding her son usually sits.

 

they don’t talk about it, like they don’t talk about so many things, but it would be foolish to think that he does not notice. as she shrinks, he grows to fill the spaces she abandons. his office, which was always bursting at the seams, begins to leak and soon stolen case files full of redacted text find their way onto the coffee table, occupying the spaces that some of scully’s books once sat. she almost laughs when she wakes up one morning to see newspaper clippings spread across the chair where she used to stack clean clothes that were waiting to be put back in their drawers (these days, she doesn’t have enough clothing left in the house to do a load of laundry).

[scully is a ghost in her own home, yet he’s the one who haunts it]

she’s not sure if this is a show of petulance or tacit acknowledgement or even agreement and understanding of her actions, but she knows that neither one of them is fighting for her to stay and that is enough.

 

she doesn’t come home one night and it isn’t because she’s pulling a double. she doesn’t call and he doesn’t ask when she steps in the door sometime past noon the next day, just lifts his body up from the couch with a smile and some news about an abduction in tucson. she replies with characteristic skepticism, but it feels scripted and worn.

[when she makes her way to their room, she sees that he didn’t sleep in their bed either]

 

eventually, she gets her own apartment back in dc- maggie scully isn’t getting any younger and there are enough hospitals in the city that would only be too happy to have her there.

[cities never sleep, and maybe the bright lights of a half a million people will keep the dark away]

[she can hope]

when she leaves for our lady of sorrows on the final morning, envelope carrying her resignation letter in her hand, they do not say goodbye (they never have before, why would they start more than two decades in?). instead, he kisses her on the forehead and tells her that he’ll see her for supper.

[he’s fully aware that he’ll be microwaving himself a tv dinner for one if he remembers to eat at all]

she smiles and nods and squeezes his hand before walking out the door.

 

it doesn’t hurt. 

she had prepared herself for pain, for the second worst kind of pain she can think of

[she’s already lost two children and a sister and so much of herself, but losing him should be different, she thinks]

yet nothing seems to come. this concerns her, but only in that she’s not sure what will be left when the numbness has passed. will she be relieved? miserable? dead? she’s interested, in a detached sort of way, to find out.

she lies down to sleep on her couch instead of the bed and tries not to imagine mulder doing the same.


End file.
